A GROUP of American astronomers soon will experience one of the greatest scientific thrills of the century. On the night the world’s most tremendous telescope is completed they will take turns peering into a tiny, brilliant eyepiece.

Looking at the heavens with the aid of the most extraordinary piece of glass ever poured, they may make discoveries that will completely change man’s conception of the universe.

After years of research the men in charge of building the monster instrument for the California Institute of Technology are now at work. Astronomers estimate that the mirror, 360,000 times more powerful than the human eye, will magnify the moon and planets 10,000 times.

COOLING slowly in a brick igloo in Corning, N. Y., is a lake of 34 tons of molten glass, representing the greatest scientific project ever attempted by man. It took six years to reach this stage of the great task and it will be more than four more years before its success is known.

From far and wide scientists came to see the formation of this huge lake of glassâ€” the pouring of the 200-inch telescope mirror that is expected to reach out into the unknown depths of the universe.

The work has hardly begun with the pouring of the mirror. Countless problems still face the scientists who have undertaken the task.

No, this article is not about a particularly ambitious band of paparazzi.

Photographing Stars with a Rocket

WILL science ever be able to take photographs of the spectra of the sun and other stars with cameras far outside the range of the earth’s atmosphere? Speculation on this possibility has been renewed by the recent experiments of Prof. Robert H. Goddard, of Worcester, Mass., in launching rockets of his own design powered with a secret liquid propellant which he invented.

Contrary to popular belief, Prof. Goddard has no intention of occupying one of his rockets on a fantastic journey to the moon. As pointed out by Dr. C. G. Abbott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, a close friend of Professor Goddard, the professor’s experiments are directed toward a scientific exploration of the upper heavens at distances now far beyond the reach of man.

This is a contemporary account of the discovery of Pluto. At the time it had not yet been named. The article lists Atlas, Prometheus, and Pluto as suggested possibilities.

How They Trailed a New Planet

Study of many photos of stars disclosed to a farm boy what may prove a new world where a famous astronomer said it would be. Old theories are upset by find.

By

ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC

A NEW planet has been announced. Out in space, four billion miles beyond the globe we live on, a yellowish object, a little larger than the earth, swings in a vast circle about the sun; a frigid little world, bathed in the dim light of perpetual dusk. Its discovery is called the most important event in astronomy in nearly a hundred years.

A new planet is not found every day. As many of us learned in school, a planet is one of the exclusive company of heavenly bodies that get their light and heat from the sun. They swing about it, as the earth does, in great circular paths, or orbits. These earthlike worlds are so few in number that they may be counted on the fingers.

Proposed photo-electric instrument may bring the moon within a mile of the earth, solve the mystery of life on the planets and reveal the gigantic sun that holds the universe together. Here Dr. Luyten tells of discoveries awaiting the great telescope.

by DR. W. J. LUYTEN
Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota

REPORTS that Dr. Francois Henroteau, astronomer at the Dominion Observatory at Ottawa, is planning a new super-telescope which will far surpass in power all existing instruments, has stirred the imagination of scientists and laymen alike. Even the new 200-inch reflector still under construction for the Mt. Wilson Observatory will be dwarfed by Dr. Henro-teau’s projected giant, which is expected to equal the lightgathering power of a 2,000-inch mirror.

Gun-mounted camera eye keeps movie record of V-2 missile as it speeds into space at 3,500 miles an hour.

By Martin Mann

POPEYE is a seeing machine. Popeye can see things yon can’t see. His big glass eye can follow a V-2 zooming 3,500 m.p.h, and tell you just what it does at the 100-mile peak of its flight. But even Popeye is no match for enemy guided missilesâ€”he could not spot an attacking rocket soon enough to sound the alarm.

“Yessir, I’m just going to sit up here on the roof with my nice new telephoto rifle-cam and get some great candid snapshots of the President’s motorcade.”

Candid Photography

High-Power Telephoto Photography

By Herbert C. McKay

A TELEPHOTO camera, suitable for the amateur, can be built up from an inexpensive box camera and a small telescope, or it can be made from one of the deluxe miniature cameras together with a highly corrected glass. Between these two extremes it is possible to arrange combinations of any degree of refinement.

Where in the universe does the mysterious cosmic ray originate? Science is now conducting extensive research to solve that mystery, for the answer may disclose the destiny of the earth we live on.

ON MOUNTAIN tops in Hawaii, Alaska, Peru and at other isolated points around the worldâ€”eighteen stations in allâ€”an answer is being sought this summer to the most perplexing question in modern science â€”what is a cosmic ray?

First discovered nearly thirty years ago, and made famous in 1925 when Dr. Millikan of California Tech confirmed their existence, and, much to his embarrassment, the press named them “Millikan’s rays,” the cosmic emanation continues to be the baffling enigma on which scientists throughout the world are divided.

Great Earthquake Registered on Homemade Instrumentâ€”Horsehairs Make Hygrometer

WHEN slippage along an old fault sent violent earth tremors through southern California recently, it wrote a detailed story upon homemade instruments in an amateur scientist’s laboratory near the center of the disturbance. Upon the black drum of a home-constructed seismograph, it swung a needle, giving its builder, Martin G. Murray, a record of the disaster. Ever since last December, Murray had noticed an increase in the number of tremors. Fom December 16 to 26, his instrument registered fourteen shocks. In March came the quake that left hundreds of buildings in ruins.

This shows you how fast technology can change. Only 36 years after this article declared that a trip to the moon was “apparently impossible”, Neil Armstrong actually walked on it.

GETTING More LIGHT On the Moon

By Calvin Frazer

IT IS unwise to dogmatize about the future, and hence a cautious man of science “would hardly make the positive assertion that human beings will never visit the moon, though the difficulties involved in such a journey now appear insuperable. On the other hand it is quite safe to assert that, without leaving his own planet, man will learn much more about the earth’s satellite in days to come than he knows today. This expectation is based upon the remarkable progress accomplished in the study of the moon in recent years.

Vintage Versions of Modern Technology - { […] This photograph comes from a magazine article published in 1956 about the future of phones talks about audio/video data compression and voice recognition as... }